Irakli Zviadadze | Content Marketer | Sugatan.io 

April 23, 2021

51+ eCommerce A/B Testing Ideas For CRO (With Examples and How-To)

Nowadays, the question you should be asking yourself when doing A/B testing for your eCommerce store and CRO is not “How?”.

Or even “What?”.

Rather, it’s “Why not?”

When it comes to Conversion Rate Optimization, the more things you can identify on your store website to A/B test – the better.

In eCommerce, the average conversion rate is 2.63%.

This is the average across all industries in eCommerce. But it’s important to remember that the figures vary from website to website. Still though, it’s a good starting point to set the bar at.

If your website is converting at 2%-3%, you’re not doing too badly.

But the only way to improve your website conversion rate is through continuous experimenting. 

Regular A/B testing helps you iterate site changes and can give you a competitive advantage once you find the secret variable that’ll boost your conversion rate.

And that’s exactly what this guide is for.

We decided to create a master list of every CRO testing idea you may want to consider and a mini case study of how we achieved a conversion rate of 5.9% on one of our eCommerce clients.

We’ll cover:

• Mini eCommerce CRO Case Study: 5.8% Conversion Rate Through 5 Different Landing Page Iterations, 23 A/B Tests, and Endless Customer Research
• 51+ eCommerce A/B Test and CRO Ideas

Whether you’re just starting your first A/B tests or you’re looking for new, more advanced ideas, the ideas below are still worth considering.

At the very least, you should question your assumptions on what converts on your website and give them a test before deciding definitively.

Before we begin though, you should keep in mind that A/B testing is a data-based approach.

If you want to understand the effectiveness of the things you’re A/B testing, you need to look at the data.

Generally speaking, when doing A/B tests in eCommerce, you follow these 4 steps:

• Form a hypothesis.
• Decide on the experiment.
• Gather data.
• Analyze data.

Along the way, you should be asking yourself questions related to your ideal buyer’s user intent.

Do they understand the value? Is this the right product for them? Do they understand the language and site navigation?

And for the most part, you should be looking at the following A/B testing metrics:

• Clicks (CTA, click-through-rate).
• Conversions.
• Bounce rate.
• Dwell time.
• Email signups (optional).
• Average order size.
• Revenue.

Now, before we begin with our list of A/B testing ideas, let’s take a look at our quick CRO case study to see what goes behind optimizing an eCommerce website for conversion rate:

Mini eCommerce CRO Case Study: 5.8% Conversion Rate Through 5 Different Landing Page Iterations, 23 A/B Tests, and Endless Customer Research

Our approach here was something along the lines of:

We can get busy doing small tests that have little impact which may ever so slowly increase the conversion rate… OR, we could be doing bigger, more important tests that might shoot up the CRO.

And the only way we managed to hit a 5.8% conversion rate was through months of different iterations. The conversion rate changes went something like this:

• January and February – 1.9% – 2%
• March – 2.5%
• April – 4.2%
• May – 5.5%
• June – 5.8%
• July – 5.5%

Once again, the average eCommerce conversion rate is around 1%-2%…

For context, this was for one of the eCommerce accounts we scaled. The product was Maine Roast protein coffee (interesting product, I know) and the eCommerce store was a simple, one-product-themed landing page using a custom theme. 

For this particular CRO experiment, we did up to 23 A/B tests of different elements on just the top-of-the-fold from January to June. 

We’re not going to cover each test in this article, but we’ll cover the 5 different versions the landing page went through to show the changes.

Before we do that though, here are 4 main CRO elements we made sure to consider on this account. Then, we did a ton of A/B tests on these elements.

• Offer – Many eCommerce companies usually have a default, go-to offer similar to what their competitors are doing. Something like “free shipping”, “buy 2 get 1 free”, “spend X$ and get something for free”, etc. We wanted to see what the customers would respond to best here and learn as much as possible about the target audience.
• Website flow – First-time site visitors should be able to comprehend everything at a glance. Make sure they don’t have to scroll through 3 different pages just to see what the product is about. With this account, we’ve tried both ways and found that having all the product information (nutrition, calories, benefits, etc.) upfront was the best approach. And the only way we found this is through rigorous A/B testing.
• CTA copy – Popular eCommerce CTAs include “Checkout”, “Buy now”, “Add to basket”, and more. Obviously, there is no one-size-fits-all CTA copy you can implement in your eCommerce store and watch the conversion rate shoot up. You have to A/B test different copy to see what works best.
• Price point – This is an important A/B testing element. If you want a quick 1% conversion rate increase, provide your users with clarity as to how much they’re actually paying for (exact amount) and what they’re getting in detail (you’ll see examples below).

Mostly, we experimented with A/B testing the headlines, the price calculator, the offer, product info, copywriting, and the design.

Let’s take a look at the different iterations we went through with the eCommerce landing page. 

In the end, we’ll reveal the final version of the site that’s live now.

Version #1 – Damn Good Coffee

This is what the first version of the landing page looked like back in January:

As you can see, it’s rather straightforward with the focus on a single benefit – the taste (“that tastes damn good”).

As we later found out, this was quite vague and didn’t say much about the unique product.

Our mindset was that, when it comes to food, the number one thing most people want to know is “Does it taste good?” Especially when talking about protein coffee.

While the taste was an important angle for the product, we later found out that the target audience also really valued the health factor.

Because we were still early into the CRO journey, we implemented a quick site survey to learn about our target audience:

The only 2 metrics that matter when it comes to CRO are data and revenue.

So, we decided to experiment further.

Version #2 – The Health Angle

The hypothesis was that the ideal customer persona knew a lot about health and nutrition.

So, we decided to give a lot of this information on the main page.

We moved the product information and price calculator in the main page, showing exactly how much they’d be saving, as well as the nutritional value and exact calories.

Now, you might be thinking – that’s A LOT of text! No way that’s going to convert!

But turns out, when it comes to health-related products, the customers DO want this information. And they want to be able to find it at a glance too.

Makes sense, when you think about it.

The same way skincare products have all the information about the chemical acids up front. It’s because the target audience for the product understands this technology behind the product.

Of course, you can A/B test your technical language and copywriting angle.

And that’s exactly what we did here.

In the context for this protein coffee product (a healthy drink for people who want to lose weight and still be able to enjoy sweet coffee that also has protein), the target audience is females who want to lose weight. They’re (mostly) health-conscious and know what they’re looking for.

So, this is an ideal product-market fit.

With this CRO iteration of the landing page, we also modified the price calculator section to show their total savings and the exact discount. And because people love the word “Free” we made sure to include that too.

People like saying what they’re paying for down to the specifics. And free shipping is always nice to see. 

And instead of paying just $69.99, they’re now paying $69.99 instead of $105.96 (in addition to free shipping and $19.99 value shaker). In their mind, this signals a better value for the price due to anchoring.

Main takeaway: Want a quick increase in your conversion rate? Show your customers exactly how much they’re paying and how much they’re saving in your offer before going to the checkout page.

Version 3 – All-Day Energy

In the next iteration, we just tested the main product image, new copy headline, and information to see the effect on the conversion rate.

We increased the product image and stacked all of the nutrition information in the picture next to it.

And on the right side, we included the main benefits, social proof, and price calculator.

We A/B tested the product photography with and without the nutrition information, and the one with the extra text performed better.

A lot of the CRO approach on this eCommerce account was based on weekly Sprint meetings between multiple people:

• UX/UI designer to design the user experience and present the information in the best way possible.
• Copywriter to craft the message, information, and headline.
• eCommerce developer to work with the UX/UI designer on implementing the designs and/or other development needed.
• Ad buyer (or eCommerce strategist) who has a lot of data on the account which they can contribute during the meetings.

In this iteration of the landing page, we found that the short-form headline “All Day Energy” didn’t convert as well.

So, next, we reverted back to the long-form description.

Lesson learned – and that’s the point of A/B testing after all.

Version 4 – Back to Basics

We also simplified the price calculator EVEN MORE because that’s what can really affect the conversion rate.

It’s easy to confuse the customer with all the numbers. So, we just removed all the junk, did A/B tests for that section alone, and made it as simple as possible.

• Highlighted the main price tag for the product.
• Crossed out text over the discount to show how much they’re saving.
• Added separate price tag for total price ($69.99) and anchored it to $105.95 to show the comparison point.

At this point, we were just playing around with how the information was being presented to the customer with how much they were going to pay.

Version 5 – Final Touches

Last but not least, with some much-needed final touches, this iteration of the landing page had the highest conversion rate at 5.8%.

Here’s what’s new in this version after some detailed A/B testing:

• Removed 1 question from the reviews section and made it clickable (jumps to social proof section at the bottom).
• Added (3 bags) to the ‘Total’ text.
• Added Afterpay pay option to pay in 4 interest-free installments of $17.50.
• Added discount code box.
• Clarified free delivery between specific dates.

One last thing that’s worth mentioning here is that, for this eCommerce website, most traffic came from Facebook ads mobile devices. You should always test how your website looks like on a mobile device first.

That is where we got around 90% of the traffic.

We did thorough A/B testing for the whole website for mobile too.

It goes in the following order:

• Product (protein coffee), nutrition info, and benefit (protein coffee that tastes like your barista made it).
• Product description (“Curbs hunger & helps you automatically eat less.”).
• Price calculator and checkout section (designed for easy navigation and resized for the mobile screen).

And that’s about it for this CRO journey and A/B testing.

To recap, the final version you see above converted at 5.8%. And from there, we made even more additional CRO changes to the website after detailed A/B tests.

Can you spot what’s new?

You can check out the live version here to study the whole website – after all, what you see above is only the top section of the fold! Check out the full website to see the rest of the website flow.

Quick recap on A/B testing so far:

• Know your ideal customer and present product information accordingly.
• eCommerce CRO is a collective and collaborative effort, based on ton of research and data.
• Small details count and make a lot of difference. 
• Yet, at the same time, you should be testing website elements that make a difference.
• A/B test everything to answer definitely. Once you have data you can then move onto the next hypothesis.
• You can A/B test just about every small detail. But in most cases, it’s better to make big, drastic changes that make a huge dent in your CRO, than to A/B test small details that might increase your conversion rate ever so slightly.

Interested in reading more about the product above beyond CRO? Learn how we scaled it 0-7 figures in the eCommerce growth saga article part 1. We also cover Facebook ads, creatives, copywriting, our approach to emails, and more in the full article.

Now, as you might have realized, A/B testing your eCommerce website and product description makes a huge difference in your conversion rate.

And there are many different elements you can A/B test. From small to huge.

SO, to help you get started, we decided to compile a master list of every A/B testing ideas (with examples) you may want to consider below!

Let’s get started!

51+ eCommerce A/B Test and CRO Ideas

The purpose of the list below is to provide you with ideas as to what elements you should be A/B testing to increase the conversion rate or general customer experience of your website.

We’ll be covering eCommerce elements that affect your conversion rate as well as general A/B testing elements that might have an impact on your website. 

We’ll be looking at:

• Homepage A/B tests.
• Product page and product category conversion tests.
• Usability and different types of “vs.” A/B tests.
• Checkout page experience tests.
• Pricing.
• Offer.
• Copywriting.
• And more.

Let’s begin!

1. Search bar appearance

If you sell multiple products, try making your search bar bigger and more prominent.

Make it as visible and intuitive as you can.

Test the placement of the search bar, the appearance (size, text, font, etc.), and to go a step further, you can even test the popular right now feature like Etsy.

This encourages users to look for a specific product and they might also get inspired by a suggestion that might override their original search intent – causing them to stay on the website longer.

2. Add site-wide benefits

As an eCommerce owner, you probably have a unique selling proposition (USP) or two that differentiates you from your competitors.

To increase your conversion rate and remove any objections your users might have, consider testing a site-wide benefits bar below your header that scrolls down with the user.

This will remind them of your main benefits and remove their objections when thinking about your products.

Few site-wide benefits might include:

• Free same-day dispatch.
• Locally made, ethically sourced.
• Includes free samples.
• More natural ingredients than your competitors.
• And more.

3. Better product description and copywriting

You can always improve your product description to increase your conversion rate and sales.

There’s A LOT that goes into crafting the perfect eCommerce product description and you can continuously keep testing this to find something that works best based on data.

But without making this article any more longer than it already is, we’ve found that to craft a perfect eCommerce product description copy, your formula should look something like this:

• Short description at the beginning (before: Agitate the problem. After: imagine what it’d be like, having a problem solved / bridge -> your product comes in.)
• Benefits of using the product through bullet points.
• How to use it (literally).
• What’s in the package.
• Overcoming doubts and objections.
• Short story about the product or founder 

Furthermore, is the copy simple, specific, clear, and directed to boost conversion? Does it touch the buyer’s EMOTION and REASON as to why they buy?

There’s a lot you can A/B test in your product description copywriting.

But instead of going after the small details, try focusing on and testing your MAIN unique mechanism. 

If you’re selling a product with a clear pain point – chances are, your customers have already tried something similar. It could be your competitor’s product or something cheaper. And they might have one clear objection:

Will it work this time? Why?

That’s the objection you should be aiming to overcome and that’s where you convince them you’re different.

There are 2 parts to the unique mechanism concept in your copy:

1. Why none of the existing solutions work (be specific).
2. Why and how your products are different and have a much better chance of working.
   

Learn how the unique mechanism (also known as “the big idea”) works in more detail in this blog post by Stefan Georgi.

4. Test product videos and auto-play

Images are good. But video is visual and therefore better.

Or is it?

While photos have their limitations, video is the next step in product demonstration and showing the feel of your product.

If you’re not doing product videos yet, consider A/B testing them with static photos and see if they make a difference.

Though, keep in mind that for some products, photos work better and make more sense.

Or, you can test both! Otherwise, you’ll never know for sure.

5. Show popular, wide-appeal products upfront

You never know who’s going to land on your homepage.

So, you might want to test showcasing products that are popular with everyone with a wide appeal.

Look at your best-selling products or best deals and emphasize them on your homepage.

One of the main goals of your homepage is to get your users off the homepage.

The best way to do this is to get them to click on an offer that’s irresistible and upfront in their face.

6. Email promotion for first-time site visitors

For first-time website visitors, you might want to consider a few different versions of email promotion or other forms of email opt-ins.

Not every user will be ready to buy from the get go. And that’s fine.

So, you should strongly consider your source of email collection strategy.

By offering customers a flat discount on their next purchase, you can start collecting emails which you’ll cash in on later.

They get a discount code and you get a purchase some time down the road (if not immediately).

You can also A/B test the following email collection forms:

• Pop-up offers.
• Email signup forms.
• Lead magnets (e.g. free ebook).
• Exit-intent pop-ups.
• Gamification (e.g. “spin the wheel for X% discount”).
• Special discount or FOMO sales if you enter email in the next 24 hours.
• And more.

Though, for some people, the whole “spin the wheel” discount opt-in is very overused.

The only way to see if it’ll work for your customers and website is to A/B test it thoroughly.

7. Seasonal promotions

From Valentine’s Day, to Black Friday to Christmas, there are many different seasonal promotions you can take advantage of and test in eCommerce.

A viable A/B experiment can look at the right place for a seasonal holiday promotion, as a pop-up or fixed part of the homepage.

As a bonus point, you should be A/B testing everything (offers, sales, pop-ups, etc.) for your seasonal promotions months (if not years) in advance.

What you can do is: 

1. Decide on an offer or site-wide discount.
2. A/B test the usability and copy.
3. When the right season comes, just change the design and copy for the offer (e.g. make it Black Friday appropriate, Valentine’s day colors, etc.).

This way, you’ll have the offer locked and ready-to-go when the time comes.

Let’s take Black Friday.

Black Friday online shopping sales hit $7.4B – which is an all-time high.

And 30% of ALL retail sales occur from Black Friday till Christmas.

So, if you prepare well, you could generate 45% of your yearly revenue in 3 months with Black Friday.

To prepare for Black Friday, you’ll also need to pre-buy media ads, have your email and SMS marketing flows ready, and more. Check out our full eCommerce Black Friday guide to learn how we did all that and generated 45% of yearly revenue in 3 months.

8. Site-wide, blanket discounts or offers

Site-wide, blanket discounts are exactly what they sound like:

A flat discount applicable to your every single product.

Include a simple banner on top of your website that follows the user as they scroll through your website.

Though, think if this makes sense for your brand and whether it’ll make you come across as “cheap”.

For some products, this might come across as “dropship-y”.

But it’s hard to say without A/B testing this idea.

Similarly, you can also test…

9. Free secret after spending $X amount 

Similar to the pop-up strategy mentioned above, this is a curiosity-driven strategy that works well in eCommerce.

Here’s how it works:

1. At the top of your website (banner), add a note that says “free secret X on orders above the $Y amount.
2. Go to Shopify, discounts, and create a new one. On percentages, select 100%, select a specific product you want to give away, and select minimum requirements.

With this strategy, you should see your conversion rate surge together with your revenue.

Consider testing different offers, $X amount (something not too high but not too low), and different free secret products.

Might take some time, but once you find the winning offer, it’ll be worth it and you can keep this running for a long time.

10. AfterPay set-up and different payment options

Payment option in itself is an interesting topic and there are many different ways you can test your price.

You can simply increase your product prices at a higher flat fee and this in itself will increase your AOV. Though, this might decrease your conversion rate.

One other payment option we’ve often tested and you should consider too is AfterPay.

When we first installed AfterPay on our stores, we saw an increase of 3-7% for first-time customers.

This simple A/B test gets more people into your funnel and makes it easier for them to buy.

AfterPay simply splits your price into 4 options and asks your customers to pay only ¼ to begin with. Then, pay the rest of the price over time.

On that note, consider adding different payment options to see what your customers react to most.

For example, people often use PayPal for quick purchases under $10. But the more options – the better.

You should be offering your customers 2-3 different payment options, minimum. 

Overstock.com has just about every form of payment option possible – including cryptocurrency.

11. Highlighted section for sales and specials

Many different studies have found that about half the online buyers only buy discounted products, except under specific circumstances.

Around 60% say they’re usually looking for a specific section that identifies sales and specials.

So, why not give the people what they want?

Consider A/B testing a special section where customers can shop for hot deals, under each product category or department.

Retailers like BestBuy and other eCommerce giants do this too.

Consider experimenting with a special place for only products on sale if it’s right for your brand.

12. A clear checkout process with progress indicators

There’s nothing more annoying than going through a checkout process that keeps on becoming longer.

People like to be in control and it’s your job to make them feel that way. 

This is why numbered lists are better than unordered lists and why you should consider A/B testing different progress indicators on your checkout page.

13. Different security badges and trust signals

This small detail can greatly impact your customer’s trust.

There are few reasons as to why a customer will want to buy your product. But there are many reasons as to why they would NOT buy from you.

This is why it’s so important to eliminate any objections and get them to trust you.

One of the main things that act as a trust signal is security badges that assure the customer it’s safe to buy from you.

You can A/B test different kind of badges and trust signals, including:

• Safe checkout badge.
• Free shipping and return badge.
• Accepted payment methods.
• Third-party endorsements.
• Money-back guarantees.
• Product guarantees (vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, etc.).

14. Try upselling before cross-selling

Instead of suggesting complementary products to your customers, consider upselling them on more expensive products first.

Research has shown that displaying more expensive products is more effective than offering recommended products (think: anchoring).

Apple is an expert at upselling products by giving customers the ability to customize and upgrade their products before making a purchase.

Apple only offers related products (e.g. smart cover for iPad. They won’t try to sell you a MacBook if you’re buying an iPad). 

For example, if your customer is buying pants, upsell them on a belt.

Meanwhile, you can offer recommended products during the checkout process and cross-sell your customers there.

Obviously, this will depend on your brand and product AOV. 

But consider testing different product combination and upsell and cross-sells 

15. Minimum discount requirements

This is like the A/B test idea #9 – but for minimum discounts.

In other words, when offering discounts, test a minimum spend for discounts.

For example – spend $50 or more and get $10 off.

Some eCommerce brands play with different variations of this test:

• Spend $75 or more and get $10 off.
• Spend $100 or more and get $15 off.
• Spend 150 or more and get $25 off.

You can test a lot of different discount options this way.

16. Perfect your CTA

Alright, I lied, there is no perfect CTA.

But as far as CRO goes, it’s important you test your CTA in many different versions.

It’s an essential part of any website, especially in eCommerce.

And there’s a lot that goes behind A/B testing this small but important part of your website.

There are many variables you can test when it comes to your CTA.

The most significant ones include:

• Color – Generally, warm colors like yellow and orange are used to generate optimism. Cold colors like blue with serenity and confidence. Green for relaxation and confidence. Meanwhile, red stands out. Get creative, try different colors, and see what works for your brand best through multiple A/B tests. 
• Size – The button should be large enough to be noticeable, but an excessive size may feel too aggressive and harm the UX. Also, consider the mobile device experience and that it’s convenient to click on even on smaller screens.
• Position – It should always be visible on the first scroll at a glance. But sometimes, for some email opt-ins, it might convert better if the CTA is followed by an explanation of the content. Consider testing 2 (or more) CTAs as well: one above and another below the first scroll.
• Wording – The text should communicate what will happen once your customer clicks on the CTA. “Buy now” is clear and concise. But this CTA might make less accustomed readers worry that they might be somehow bound to make a purchase. If that’s the case, consider testing out softer CTAs like “add to cart” or “continue shopping”. 
• Special effects – Buttons can be highlighted using special shapes and effects. This small detail might affect the engagement and interactivity of your website. Other variables might include a shadow on the CTA, a 3D effect, roundness, or some other effect when highlighted.

Check out some 50+ CTA examples to get an idea of potential A/B tests you can do with this.

17. Shop notifications

Notifications are everywhere these days.

Even on eCommerce websites.

Sometimes they’re annoying. And sometimes they’re helpful and grab our attention.

Seriously, have you ever gone on a website, gotten a notification from it, and NOT clicked to see what it was?

This is partly playing into FOMO as well. We’re naturally curious to see what’s the message.

You can use this to let your customers know of a brand new promotion or an item they’ve saved in their cart.

The point is, you can test many different notification messages to see the clicks and conversions.

18. Mosaic vs. list view

Here’s another small detail that might make a difference on your engagement and bounce rate:

Do your customers prefer a mosaic or a list view of your products?

Making it as easy as possible for your customers to find the right product is a matter of user experience and design.

The answer depends on your product and how broad the customers’ search is.

For the most part, if it’s a narrow search, a list view might make more sense and give more product info that’s easier to digest.

If it’s a broad search, however, a mosaic list might be better to provide more info and the different product suggestions.

To A/B test which one works better, compare user engagement for a mosaic vs list view.

Or you can just give them the option to select whichever view they’d prefer.

19. One-page vs. multi-page checkout

The checkout page is one of your most important pages.

It’s important you don’t lose your customer once they’ve come so far.

You have to find the right balance and test what option makes it as easy as possible for your customers to complete their shopping journey without being confused.

If you do plan on using multi-page checkout, make sure you test clear progress indicators as mentioned in step #12 too.

20. Hamburger menu vs. full navigation

Hamburger menu is this clickable 3 line button that extends the screen and offers more shortcuts.

Now, for mobile devices, you’re almost always going to use the hamburger menu option to give them more visual content straight away without any obstacles.

This will be the majority of your users anyway.

However, for desktop users, consider testing the format to see what they prefer. 

In this test, you can measure the impact on clicks and pages per visit.

21. Guest checkout vs. create an account

If a customer doesn’t have an account registered on your site, consider testing guest checkout as the default option. In other words, don’t make them register to go through checkout.

If the customer doesn’t have cookies on your site that signal they’re a registered user, test their experience as a guest checkout.

If you have more expensive and fancy products, customers might naturally want to create an account as they might feel it’s safer. 

22. Exit-intent popups

This is similar to test #6.

With this A/B test, create a popup that’s triggered by exit intent.

• If the customer moves their cursor outside the browser window.
• If they spent more than 15 seconds on the checkout page.
• And more.

For this, you can use the Exit Intent Popup by OptiMonk.

And if you’re not sure what to A/B test in your popup, check out this article for a list of 40+ exit-intent popup hacks you can use in eCommerce.

23. Product specs in a list vs. images

This will largely depend on your product and how technical it is. And the answer might be obvious. 

But it might be worth A/B testing anyway if you’re not sure how to communicate your product specifications and descriptions.

• One approach is to create images that visualize product descriptions like size, quality, ratio, material, etc. This makes more sense if the product is technical and visual aid is needed.
• In other cases, a simple list with text might be enough. For example, most people are used to seeing the specs of a watch in simple text next to the product.

24. Different types of price reductions (emphasize the difference)

As mentioned in the eCommerce CRO case study above, we went through a couple of different phases of A/B testing the price reductions (among many other things).

And that’s for a good reason!

Price reductions are one of the main drivers for buyers. And it’s worth testing with a few different ways to display this small but important detail.

Try different colors, strikethrough text or not, highlighted text, and more.

25. Hide your coupon code field

Bear with me here – showing the coupon code box might be hurting your website’s conversion rate.

How does that work?

Because, whenever a customer sees there’s an empty field for a coupon, their first instinct is to figure out a code for that.

They might open a new tab and start searching for it on Google. Install Honey extension to automatically pull up a code on its own, or look somewhere else.

Then, here’s what might happen:

• They’re unable to find a coupon code that works, and lose motivation or interest to buy.
• They give up on the search and decide not to buy because they’re convinced there’s a better option out there (buyer’s remorse).

Remove or hide your coupon code. Test the difference in the conversions. See which version is better.

  26. Include and test key information in your footer

The website footer is a commonly overlooked part of the website.

While this might be the last thing on your list of things to optimize for, this small section can help reduce your bounce rate and increase your conversion rate.

Imagine:

1. An uninterested customer scrolls all the way down and ends up on your footer.
2. They’re ready to click away until they notice your “our story” link.
3. They end up on your “about us” page (which you should treat as a sales page), become inspired by your story, and decide to buy your product because of your USP.

You should test including different kinds of information in your footer.

But for the most part, it should be key information to help customers find what they’re looking for (such as new collections, best sellers, etc.). Or general information about your brand.

27. Different brand value propositions

Your brand value proposition is a way to connect with your customers in a sentence or two.

So, it makes sense to test different variations of this until you find one that connects with your target audience the most.

As we found out in the eCommerce CRO project mentioned in the beginning of the article, your brand value proposition or even your tagline can go through a lot of changes.

You’re supposed to simply state what you do and why you’re the best at it.

But you need to test the wording to see which version works best.

Here are the different iterations we tried with the eCommerce account we scaled:

• Protein Coffee that tastes damn good – Still somewhat vague and focuses only on the “delicious taste” angle, and not the health angle.
• All day energy with a coffee shop taste – Better, but still not specific enough as it doesn’t mention how the product works. 
• Protein coffee that tastes like your barista made it – Best version so far and the live version on the site. This also has the health angle, is specific (protein coffee), and has the “benefit without the sacrifice” angle too. Meaning, you get the best of both worlds – a healthy protein energy coffee drink that tastes just like the one your local coffee shop barista makes, without all the unhealthy stuff (which is further reinforced by text below and healthy ingredients).

Below your value proposition, you can even experiment with text that better explains your proposition.

28. Email testing

Email testing brings similar insights as testing your ads. Which is to say, understanding your audience better and what offer makes them convert better.

But you can test so many different things in your email marketing that listing them all out would take forever.

Here are a few ideas you can test within your emails:

• Subject lines.
• Length.
• Word order (click-through rate).
• Content.
• Personalization.
• Visuals.
• Images or no images.
• Style.
• Copy.
• Timing.
• And more.

Obviously, that’s a lot.

But it’s worth going through all the troubles of A/B testing and perfecting your eCommerce email flows.

Because, if done right, you can generate 40%+ of your revenue with email marketing in eCommerce.

First, create your essential eCommerce email flows. Such as:

• Welcome email.
• Cart abandonment email.
• Browse abandonment email.
• Product replenishment.
• Post-purchase follow-up.
• Re-engagement or goodbye email.
• Flash sales or FOMO email campaign.

And then, yes, you guessed it – you can A/B test each email with the corresponding KPIs (e.g. conversion rate for sales email.).

Check out our full eCommerce email marketing for more info on perfecting your emails and generating more revenue.

29. Before/After images on your product page

You can’t include before and after images in your ads.

But guess what?

You can go ahead and use many of them in your product pages!

They’re super convincing and can boost your revenue highly.

Just make sure you test and find the right before and after images – consider testing user-generated content (UGC) against model pictures.

30. Wording for checkout for discounts

On its own, Shopify does not make checkout on mobile an intuitive process.

But luckily, there is a method that helps push the customer through the checkout process by reducing friction.

All you need to do is replace the wording. And yes, that means you can A/B test your wording version to see which copy gets the most discount checkouts.

For example, instead of “Expand order summary”, you can do “Click here to apply discount”.

To do that through Shopify’s back-end:

1. Go to the Online Store through the left navigation button.
2. Go to Themes.
3. Click Actions.
4. Click Edit Languages.
5. Search Expand Order Summary.
6. Change the text to “Click here to enter your discount code” or something similar.

31. Include a science back-up

This might be expensive and time-consuming, but can be a big boost in your conversion rate.

Basically, with this idea, you have to conduct a study to see the effects of your product on your customers and then, use that information in your homepage copy.

Something like this.

The more persuasion you can include on your homepage – the better.

32. Implement and test a chatbot flows

Chatbots are part of your site-wide eComm website test and they’re now an essential part of almost any site.

If you’re unable to give your customers 24/7 support, a chatbot is an excellent solution to your problem that can help out customers stuck on making a purchase.

Chatbots are proven for improving overall customer experience and they’re relatively inexpensive to implement.

Then, you can A/B test your chatbots within your flows, variants, send buttons, text replies, and more.

33. Different product reviews

When people land on your product page, they usually jump straight to the review section.

That’s one of the most powerful persuasion tools at your disposal.

Use them everywhere: product pages, landing page, and wherever you feel necessary.

But consider doing and testing different product review styles:

• 1-5 Star reviews.
• User-generated content (quotes, user-submitted images, etc.).
• Amazon-style ratings that you can filter down.
• And more.

34. Improve and test higher-quality photos on your website

Photos are your face and make your brand feel persona and relatable.

If you’re selling a high-end product, your website, branding, and photos should communicate that.

After using improved photos on our website, we immediately saw an increase in our revenue.

This test might be worth a try if you have a lot of different photos you can try out.

35. Optimize and re-test your SMS marketing copy

There’s a lot of similarities between SMS and email marketing.

You can even use (almost) the same copy.

But if you really want to go the extra step, you should treat it as a different channel (because it is), and test different mobile elements.

Similarly with idea #32, you can A/B test your SMS flows, communication, CTA, and more.

What’s different with SMS marketing from emails though is that you need to keep in mind best mobile-friendly practices. Obviously, you can’t use images, but you can still test the copy, URL or CTA, and the mobile-friendliness of the landing page you’re directing them to.

Not sure where to begin with eCommerce SMS marketing?

Check out this SMS marketing for eCommerce guide to learn what you need.

36. Font size and line-height

This may seem like an unnecessary or unimportant thing to spend time testing on, but it’s important to make sure the copy on your website is easily skimmable. 

Try to improve the readability of your site content by testing different font size and line heights.

And also consider how your website design, layout, and user experience work together.

The example below is well-optimized as it provides a clean, minimalistic design with clear, readable text size.

37. Lifestyle images vs. product images

People are naturally drawn to images with people in them. Ideally, people that look like them or look like what they want to look like (e.g. athletic, sexy, successful, etc.).

But this is not always the case.

Try featuring images of people using your products (UGC, models, influencers, etc.) vs. an isolated view of the product against a clear, pretty background. 

Depending on what you’re selling, you might be surprised by the results on your conversion rate.

But of course, you’ll have to test both ways and decide based on data.

38. Make your shopping carts persistent to test cart abandonment

56% of consumers use the shopping cart to save products to come back to later to make the purchase.

So, if someone puts a product in their shopping cart and comes back in a few days, only to see that their cart is empty, chances are, they’re not going to start their search from scratch.

Customers often treat the shopping cart as their personal “wish list”. So, if they save items and come back to your store sometime later, only to find their items disappeared, they’re most likely going to leave your store.

This is where persistent shopping carts come in.

Persistent shopping carts allow customers to return to their original shopping experience without having to search for their product one-by-one again.

These carts follow them across their devices and provide continuity.

So, whether your customers come back to your cart in a week or in a month, they might be reminded of the products they wanted to buy before, and follow up on the purchase this time.

You can test this by looking at your cart abandonment and sales.

Chances are, this should easily decrease your cart abandonment rate at least.

There are many different Shopify plugins that do this which you can find on Google.

39. Page load speed

This is another small but important test.

If you optimize your site speed and make it load faster, you should see a noticeable increase in conversions.

To do this, you should:

1. Compress images using TinyPNG.
2. Use caching.
3. Use fewer round-trips.
4. Optimize for mobile.
5. Remove any unnecessary apps and javascript. 

You might need a developer’s help to look into this in more detail, but it’ll be worth it.

If your website is not loading in under 3 seconds, you’re probably losing conversions.

Test image file sizes on how they affect bounce rate and engagement rate.

40. Test your order of words and arrangement 

We covered something similar to this in tactic #15 on minimum discount requirements.

Which one is more effective?

1. Get $25 off your first order.
2. Get an additional $25 off. Order now.

Of course, it’s hard to say without testing.

As we found in our eComm case study above, small changes like this (especially if they deal with pricing), can make a lot of difference.

41. Top product categories vs. individual products

Highlighting your top eComm products is another great way to minimize your customer skimming through your website.

If you’re a larger eCommerce store with lots of product categories, it may be helpful to direct your visitors to your most popular categories or products.

Most eComm stores display their top categories as soon as you reach their homepage in order to appeal to the masses.

It’s more likely for someone to click on a category than an individual product that catches their eyes. Of course, unless your store is a single-product website.

Another option might be to display your top sellers and most popular products.

42. Experiment with personalization

If a user was browsing winter shoes the last time they were on your site, offer for them to pick up where they left off on your site and display your latest collection of winter shoes. 

With every aspect of personalization you apply to the customer experience, the better you will be at converting visitors. 

For example, if someone expresses interest in a product on your website, retarget them on their favorite social media to draw them back in and finish the purchase.

You can also experiment with personalization in email marketing too (as mentioned in strategy #28).

For emails, you can test:

• If first name tags get higher open and click-through rate.
• If behavior and segmentation personalization emails get more sales.
• If omnichannel personalization grants a better customer experience.

43. Experiment with different UGC

We mentioned how useful UGC can be in A/B testing in idea #37.

But you can take this one step further and use user-generated content directly from Instagram and use that as social proof.

1. Give your users the ability to share themselves wearing your products on Instagram (e.g. by tagging you or under a specific hashtag “share your looks #brandname”).
2. Then, link part of your website to UGC to that Instagram hashtag.
3. Finally, customers will be motivated to share the products on social media for the opportunity to get featured, and the brand benefits from free promotion. Win-win.

You can use this in your landing page as well as under specific product pages. For example, if you encourage customers to post images of that specific product.

44. Use cart abandonment emails and remarketing to encourage return visits

If your website visitors accept cookies, you can use that as an opportunity to remarket them with similar products.

And to add to that, if you collected the visitor’s email before they left your site, you should experiment with your cart abandonment email campaign to nurture those sales.

Many eComm websites send an email 24 hours after a customer leaves their website.

They make it simple with just on CTA in the email to be taken to the checkout page on their site.

In one unique eCommerce case study, one company generated $87K with a single community welcome email and gained a 42% open rate, and a 6.2% click-through rate.

All this, probably from endlessly A/B testing the email down to each detail.

Wondering what that email looks like?

Check out case study #19 in our full eCommerce marketing case studies for more info on this.

45. Remove the cart page altogether and skip straight to checkout

We mentioned a few different ways you can A/B test your shopping cart, but what about removing the cart page altogether?

This would be an interesting way to streamline your customer’s journey to the purchase path and make it as direct as possible.

If you ARE going to test removing that page though, make sure to implement a mini-cart feature on your site so that your customers do have the opportunity to see their items in their cart before moving onto checkout.

46. Test the length of your headlines and sub-headlines

Your headlines determine if a potential customer will understand what you’re about at a glance.

So, naturally, there’s a lot of different ways you can word your proposition.

Be as direct as possible and make sure you don’t have any extra paragraphs of text your customers won’t read through.

1. Main benefit / bigger picture (main heading).
2. Unique mechanism / how it works (sub-headline)
3. CTA (“shop now”, different product categories, take a quiz, etc.).

47. Use a smaller font size to indicate the price

We associate small visual stimuli with small numerical values. So, the smaller the physical size of the price, the smaller people will perceive it to be – as if it’s no big deal.

This will make the price tag more subtle too and not automatically draw the customer’s eye to it straightaway. 

48. Experiment with pricing psychology

If you haven’t looked into the psychology of pricing yet, charm pricing is a very common tactic when dealing with product pricing.

Our brain perceives a price that ends with 9 to be more of a deal. In other words, we often see $39.99 close to $30.00, which is cheaper than $40.00.

Other pricing psychology hacks worth testing include:

• Prestige pricing – In which prices are set at a high level to recognize the product is superior quality. People tend to associate high prices with high-quality. Hence why positioning and branding are so important.
• Bundles – Amazon often suggests 2 or 3 products that you may want to purchase at the same time. Most online shoppers fall for this because they’re amazed by the convenience of just buying everything together. We did something similar once by creating a “super bundle” of 11 products. The bundle cost ~$400 and the AOV went up from $105 to $115 within a day.
• Odd pricing – This test often works best on technical products and rationally driven purchases ending with odd numbers. Odd prices signal that the eCommerce retailer carefully calculated the cost of all of the product’s components and priced it very carefully. 
• Price anchoring – Online shoppers almost always rely heavily on the first piece of the price offered. Placing a higher value on an initial product 

Once you understand your customers, there’s a lot of different ways you can A/B test their behavior within your sales funnel.

For more psychological triggers you can incorporate in your sales funnel and eCommerce store, check out our article on lessons learned spending $1mm on Facebook ads.

49. Increase and test your product prices

Probably one of the easiest things you can A/B test in your store.

You’d be surprised how much you can increase your average order value by simply increasing the price of your products.

Though, the conversion rate might drop. Still worth testing it out to get a better idea of your sales.

50. A/B test your ‘About Us’ page so that it’s more sales-y

What’s the best sales page on your website?

From our experience, it’s the ‘About Us’ page!

Whenever customers want to visit that page, they’re more likely to buy our products.

Here are the things we’ve included in the About page and what we’ve tested with before:

• Video of the founder explaining their story.
• High-quality copy that explains what the founder has been through to establish the eComm brand (video vs. copy is always interesting to test).
• Link to the product.
• What makes the brand different.
• The philosophy and values behind the eCommerce brand.
• And more.

For reference, check out the philosophy behind the Drunk Elephant brand and how different it is from every other ‘About Us’ page:

They write about their philosophies and what makes them different from other brands!

Looking for more tips on boosting your eComm sales? Check out our long list of 99+ eCommerce hacks to boost sales to see other elements to A/B test and simple sales hacks you can implement today.

51. Test different product features and benefits through copywriting

We mentioned product descriptions (test #3) and unique mechanism, but here’s another approach to clever copywriting that’s based on thorough research.

When doing customer research in reviews, we usually look for:

• Motivation themes – E.g. their motivation and hopes for what the product would do to solve their problems.
• Anxiety themes – Their pain points and objections.
• Natural language – How they speak. This will be extremely useful when writing ads or product descriptions.

Then, test out different pain points and anxiety theme callouts. 

Your customers will probably respond to some of them more positively than others, depending on which specific feature they value the most.

Remember, you won’t be able to identify which features those are without testing!

52. Facebook video ads, eCommerce creatives, and more

Obviously, you should be A/B testing your ads and creatives inside-out.

But going into this in detail would take forever.

Generally speaking, some of our top creative angles include:

• Testimonial videos (from influencer marketing or UGC).
• Story video ads.
• Advertorials and video demonstrations
• Competitor comparison video ads
• Benefit-without-the-sacrifice.
• And more.

For more info on video creatives, check out our guide to top eCommerce Facebook video ads for lessons learned analyzing ads that generated $10M+.

A/B Testing Everything

So, to recap – where do you go from here?

Well, you can start A/B testing everything in your eCommerce funnel and see how it’ll impact your sales.

But that can take forever and you just might not have the time for that.

So, instead, consider running A/B tests that might have a huge impact on your sales and make noticeable change in your data.

Remember, the only way to improve your website conversion is through continuous experimenting and testing everything.

Regular A/B tests help your site go through iterations and can give you a competitive edge once you find that one secret variable that’ll boost your conversion rate.

NOW, did I miss anything?

Let us know down in the comments if there’s something that’s not mentioned here that you always make sure to A/B test in your store.

OR, if you haven’t done so yet, join our private Facebook group where you can share your thoughts or join in on the discussion of the latest eCommerce growth-hacks: eCommerce Growth Hacks | Facebook Ads, Creatives, Email & More | by Sugatan | Facebook.

[2022 addition] Watch this video for a better grasp of the importance of A/B testing creatives for your Facebook ads, and this one for a crash course about testing Facebook ads.

See you soon!